Lorrie Moore - Bark - Stories

“Sanity’s conjectural,” said Mike. His brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Zora’s very attractive, don’t you think?”

Ira thought of her beautiful, slippery skin, the dark, sweet hair, the lithe sylph’s body, the mad, hysterical laugh. She had once, though only briefly, insisted that Man Ray and Ray Charles were brothers. “She is attractive,” Ira said. “But you say that like it’s a good thing.”

“Right now,” said Mike, “I feel like anything that isn’t about killing people is a good thing.”

“This may be about that,” said Ira.

“Oh, I see. Now we’re entering the callow, glib part of spring.”

“She’s wack, as the kids say.”

Mike looked confused. “Is that like wacko?”

“It’s like wacko, but not like Waco —at least I don’t think so. At least not yet. I would stop seeing her, but I don’t seem to be able to. Especially now with all that’s happening in the world, I can’t live without some intimacy, companionship, whatever you want to call it, to face down this global craziness.”

“You shouldn’t use people as human shields.” Mike paused. “Or — I don’t know — maybe you should.”

“I can’t let go of hope, of the illusion of something coming out of this romance, I’m sorry. Divorce is a trauma, believe me, I know. Its pain is a national secret! But that’s not it. I can’t let go of love. I can’t live without love in my life. Hold my hand,” said Ira. His eyes were starting to water. Once when he was a small child he had gotten lost, and when his mother had finally found him, four blocks from home, she had asked him if he had been scared. “Not really,” he had said, sniffling pridefully. “But then my eyes just suddenly started to water.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Mike.

“I can’t believe I just asked you to hold my hand,” said Ira, but Mike had already taken it.

The hashish was good. The sleeping pills were good. He was walking slowly around the halls at work in what was a combination of serene energy and a nap. With his birthday coming up, he went to the doctor for his triennial annual physical and, mentioning a short list of nebulous symptoms, he was given dismissive diagnoses of “benign vertigo,” “pseudo gout,” and perhaps “migraine aura,” the names, no doubt, of rock bands. “You’ve got the pulse of a boy, and the mind of a boy, too,” said his doctor, an old golfing friend.

Health, Ira decided, was notional. Palm Sunday — all these goyim festivals were preprinted on his calendar — was his birthday, and when Zora called he blurted out that information. “It is?” she said. “You old man! Are you feeling undernookied? I’ll come over Sunday and read your palm. If you know what I mean.” Wasn’t she cute? Dammit, she was cute. She arrived with Bruno and a chocolate cake in tow. “Happy birthday,” she said. “Bruno helped me make the frosting.”

“Did you now,” Ira said to Bruno, patting him on the back in a brotherly embrace that the boy attempted to duck and slide out from under.

They ordered Chinese food and talked about high school, Advanced Placement courses, homeroom teachers, and James Galway (soulful mick or soulless dork, who could decide?). Zora brought out the cake. There were no candles so Ira lit a match, stuck it upright in the frosting, and blew it out. His wish had been a vague and general one of good health for Bekka. No one but her. He had put nobody else in his damn wish. Not the Iraqi people; not the GIs; not Mike, who had held his hand; not Zora. This kind of focused intensity was bad for the planet.

“Shall we sit on Bruno?” Zora was laughing and backing her sweet tush into Bruno, who was now sprawled out on Ira’s sofa, resting. “Come on!” she called to Ira. “Let’s sit on Bruno.” She was now sitting on the boy’s hip while Bruno protested in a laughing, grunting manner.

At this point Ira was making his way toward the liquor cabinet. He believed there was some bourbon there. He would not need ice. “Would you care for some bourbon?” he called over to Zora, who was now wrestling with Bruno and looked up at Ira and said nothing. Bruno, too, looked at him and said nothing.

Ira continued to pour. Zora straightened up and walked over to him. He was both drinking bourbon and eating cake. He had a pancreas like a rock. “We should probably go,” said Zora. “It’s a school night.”

“Oh, OK,” said Ira, swallowing. “I mean, I wish you didn’t have to.”

“School. What can you do? I’m going to take the rest of the cake home for Bruny’s lunch tomorrow. It’s his favorite.”

Heat and sorrow filled Ira. The cake had been her only present to him. He closed his eyes and nuzzled his face into hers. “Not now,” she whispered. “He gets upset.”

“Oh,” Ira said. “Well, then I’ll walk you out to the car.” And there he gave her a quick hug. She walked around the car and got in on the driver’s side. He stepped back up on the curb and knocked on the window of the passenger’s side to say good-bye to Bruno. But the boy would not turn. He flipped his hand up, showing Ira the back of it.

“Bye! Thank you for sharing my birthday with me!” Ira called out. Where affection fell on its ass, politeness could step up. But then there was the heat and sorrow again just filling his face. Zora’s Honda lights went on, then the engine, then the whole vehicle flew down the street.

At Bekka’s coo-coo private school, to which Marilyn had years ago insisted on sending her, the students and teachers were assiduously avoiding talk of the war. In Bekka’s class they were doing finger-knitting while simultaneously discussing their hypothetical stock market investments. The class was doing best with preferred stock in Kraft, GE, and GM; watching their investments move slightly every morning on the Dow Jones was also helping their little knitted scarves. It was a right-brain, left-brain thing. For this, Ira forked over nine thousand dollars a year. Not that he really cared. As long as she was in a place safe from war — the alerts were moving from orange to red to orange; no information, just duct tape and bright, mind-wrecking colors — turning Bekka into a knitting stockbroker was OK with him. Exploit the system, man! he himself used to say, in college. He could, however, no longer watch TV. He packed it up, along with the VCR, and brought the whole thing over to Zora’s. “Here,” he said. “This is for Bruno.”

“You are so nice,” she said, and kissed him near his ear and then on his ear. Possibly he was madly in love with her.

“The TV’s broken,” said Ira, when Bekka came that weekend and asked about it. “It’s in the shop.”

“Whatever,” Bekka said, pulling her scarf yarn along the floor so the cats could play.

When next he picked Zora up to go out, she said, “Come on in. Bruno’s watching a movie on your VCR.”

“Does he like it? Should I say hello to him?”

Zora shrugged. “If you want.”

He stepped into the house, but the TV was not in the living room. It was in Zora’s bedroom, where, spread out half-naked on Zora’s bedspread, as he himself had been just a few evenings before, lay Bruno. He was watching Bergman’s The Magic Flute .

“Hi, Brune,” he said. The boy said nothing, transfixed, perhaps not hearing him. Zora came in and pressed a cold glass of water against the back of Bruno’s thigh.

“Yow!” cried Bruno.

“Here’s your water,” said Zora, walking her fingers up one of his legs.

Bruno took the glass and placed it on the floor. The singing on the same television screen that had so recently brought Ira the fiery bombing of Baghdad seemed athletic and absurd, perhaps a kind of joke. But Bruno remained riveted. “Well, enjoy the show,” said Ira, who didn’t really expect to be thanked for the TV, though now actually knowing he wouldn’t be made him feel a little crestfallen.